Snapey Gets The Ick
by Zigadenus
Summary: It had taken the better part of nine years to get the miserable bastard to the altar, and now, after a mere three months of connubial bliss, he was bloody well dying on her. Humor, NSFW, complete in two parts.
1. Chapter 1

**_Author's Note:_** _And now for something completely different! Those who follow me over at LiveJournal have heard rumors (started by me) that the following Thing exists. I'm sorry. No, maybe I'm not._

* * *

At first, he chalked it up to the exploding cauldron. Close to two gallons of incipient hair removal crème had aerosolized, and that was bound to do a number on your lungs, even with masterfully swift deployment of Bubble-head Charms. In fact, he was slyly pleased when a calming [or at least a procrastinatory] post-lesson cuppa burned on its way down, and he realized that his throat actually felt a bit raw. If he spun this the right way, Minerva could perhaps be convinced that adding 'relevant and useful' potions to the curriculum was going to cost her in extra Staff sick days. Hit 'em where it hurts, right in the budget.

He tapped his quill against the arch of his nose, gave an experimental cough – yes, that did sort of twinge in an unpleasant way – and jotted the particulars of today's Experiments in Better Education down in his daybook. He was building a case. He had columns of data, and graphs, and a colour-coded chart and everything. (Colour-coding hadn't been his own idea, but he could recognize a good thing when he saw it - it made a world of difference in delineating the data in a way that was both aesthetically pleasing and as impactful as a bludger.)

That this exercise also helped to delay the onslaught of Second-Year essays was only an added benefit.

By dinner, 'slyly pleased' had transitioned to 'a bit concerned'. That experimental cough had started a tickle, and a throat-soothing lozenge had only briefly masked the symptom. This was worrying: none of the gases evolved during that particular stage of brewing were apt to have persistent effects; moreover, he'd been taking healthy swigs of several likely antidotes, in a cocktail that certainly wouldn't win any bartending awards. Paranoia, yes, but a lifetime of cloak-and-dagger with danger at every corner, not to mention the very evident perils of teaching, had driven home the lesson that paranoia improved lifespans. His own, in particular. No matter how awful an antidote tasted, it was surely better than coughing up bits of your lungs. Or, for that matter, dying from snakebite. Just to draw perfectly random examples.

So, by process of elimination, coupled with the accumulating evidence that this was getting worse in spite of the antidotes, it was beginning to seem likely that he'd managed to contract a virus from one of the little blighters. This was, needless to say, highly disappointing in that honesty might compel him to exclude this incident from his cost-benefits analysis. _Might_. Well, alright, probably _would_ , because it was going to have to stand up to the review of at least two Gryffindors, one of whom was going to be highly motivated to discredit his legitimate data, and the other of whom was endowed with an inflated sense of virtuous integrity… well, when anyone of consequence happened to be looking. _He_ knew differently, but as he didn't enjoy kipping on the sofa, he generally hesitated to put this knowledge about much.

With a regretful sigh, he tapped his daybook with his wand, and the entry flickered into the sullen orange of 'suspected outlier'. Pity, that. On the other hand, it _did_ give him an excuse to head up to the infirmary and try to cadge some Pepper-Up off of Poppy.

"You don't sound symptomatic to me," the cruel harridan proclaimed, after assaulting his chest and back with a cold stethoscope. "Come back if it gets worse, but I'm not doling out potions that you don't need."

They had sort of mutually co-discovered that he had a neurologic sensitivity to the products of a chemical reaction between _Ephedra_ extract and the half-dozen other ingredients that formed the proprietary base of what was otherwise a fairly standard cold remedy. Co-discovering anything with Poppy Pomfrey was a crying shame, largely because where he was concerned, she considered herself some sort of AA sponsor. Which was plainly ridiculous, because he wasn't addicted – how could you be? Pepper-Up was nastiness distilled, and he should know, having distilled his fair share of nasty. Still, the edgy, heightened perceptions, three to six hours of monomania, and the way things sort of glowed-at-their-edges combined into pretty decent compensation for literally blowing steam out your ears.

He essayed a hopeful sniffle (well, in all fairness, his nose _was_ beginning to drip), but Pomfrey was not to be moved. A tissue and a hard-eyed glare, followed by a snide remark about the efficacy of nasal lavages weren't _quite_ the flavour of compassion he'd been angling for.

He certainly could have brewed his own Pepper-Up, but the Board of Governors were right bastards about going over supply lists, budget and expenditure tables, and any little extras that had been ear-marked as personal research. Since he had to fight tooth and nail for every last line item, he'd long ago decided to save his energy for more interesting ingredients. The kind that didn't also happen to be obvious precursors to Muggle street drugs. Because you just really couldn't supplement your income that way, and still expect to retain a job teaching. And, well, if he didn't exactly _like_ teaching, he had gotten settled into it the way you do with a ratty old chair, the kind that has an arse groove in just the right spot, and no, he didn't think the study's décor would be substantially improved by new furniture, or at least some that wasn't fraying at the seams and leaking stuffing on occasion. Hermione had Opinions about his chair, and he had consequently dug in. You couldn't afford to give any ground, because the instant you did, it would be a wardrobe update, a haircut, five to six servings of veg, and an ominous visit to her parents' practise.

Luckily, Hermione held no such Opinions about his teaching at Hogwarts. Lucky, that is, in the sense that it saved him the effort of having to manufacture some kind of split personality disorder, in order to justify leaping to a staunch defense of the old pile. He'd worried, for a while, that her ambitions would ultimately steer her away from the school, but there weren't any signs of that being the case. On the contrary, she showed every indication of being content here, and even enjoying the relative anonymity of being Professor Granger, lone bastion of sensibility in a sea of dunderheads. Sensibility, not sanity. He wouldn't go that far. Not even where she was concerned. Because, heaven help her, she appeared to actually like Hogwarts, whereas sane persons only tolerated it as the lesser evil of several alternatives including but not limited to Azkaban, Albania, America, or working for the Ministry of Magic.

Of course, this wasn't to say that there weren't a plethora of instances in which a cozy gaol cell in the North Sea seemed appealing. When faced with Second-Year essays, say. He rearranged himself in the chair, put his feet up on the ottoman. Getting comfortable, that was the key. And well, then his quill needed recharging, but the ink was run out, so he'd have to pilfer some from Hermione's desk. And it took _forever_ to break through her passwards. _Rhymes with what I'd like to do to Severus tonight_ could be nearly anything.

Being a spy was a lot less James Bond than you'd think. Mostly it consisted of lists. Who was at the meeting, whose Gringott's accounts were showing an unexpected uptick, who was showing signs of being a Muggle sympathizer, and who was responsible for taking out the rubbish at Grimmauld Place and on which night. That sort of thing. He'd liked being a spy. Being in control of the flow of information was the first step to being in control of the entire situation, and it was funny how few people really knew that.

Not that there weren't downsides to it all, but you had to accept that they were just professional hazards: sometimes you were captured and suspended over a frothing tank of laser-equipped sharks, deep in the bowels of the villain's volcanic lair, and sometimes you got mouthed up by an overly-obedient pet snake in a grotty old shack. You win some, you lose some.

Of course, sometimes, you also got caught making lewd lists at your wife's desk, and wondering if anything rhymed with "fellatio". And those times more than made up for the professional hazards.

The newspapers ought to have had a field day when word got out that one Severus Snape, Greasy Git, was tupping one Hermione Granger, Epic Swot. There should have been at least a few editorials on his lack of character, or her lack of taste, and it could have been hinted darkly that perhaps he wasn't such a reformed fellow after all, and you could never trust a Death Eater, and she had best be on guard for coercive potions or _Imperius_. (Although, given that the Light had won, you'd think the poor reformed Death Eater should be the one to worry, based on precedents.) And yet, the press had largely failed to bite, and his nightmare of having to stifle sniggers and confiscate newspapers, and generally slink about in high dudgeon in response to such an invasion of his privacy, had failed to materialize. In early days, Hermione had given a single waspish interview (the reporter had got past her guard by suggesting the context of his questions would be educational reforms):

 ** _MDF:_** _And I understand you've accepted a proposal of marriage from one of your colleagues, Severus Snape?  
_ _ **HG:**_ _It was my idea, actually. And it took the better part of nine years to bring him 'round to the notion. But now that I've worn him down, I fully intend to wear him out._

With anyone else, you'd have known they were taking the piss. With Hermione Granger you couldn't tell, because she was so frighteningly earnest in everything she did. Only Weasley seemed to think she might've been joking. The little blighter had sidled up to him once and asked, low and with a Look, "So has she worn you out yet?"

He hadn't answered, because Potter had overhead the sotto voce remark, and opined that it was disgusting, and they ought to be sticking up for Hermione, and Snape deserved punishment, not camaraderie. To which Weasley had rolled his eyes, "Mate, he's shagging Hermione. That's punishment enough for anyone."

Severus Snape thereafter carefully avoided Weasleys of any flavour because he Did Not Want to Know Any Details.

In any event, it had clearly helped matters that she'd positioned herself as the aggressor, as it were. And he wasn't entirely sure she hadn't been, because quite a few very good ideas hadn't originated in his own brain. I.e., **a)** skiving off staff meetings for the better part of a year or three, in favour of a quiet pint and some decent conversation down in the village, **b)** hiding out in a Muggle pub when the afore-mentioned sanctuary had been put under surveillance by Longbottom, who suspected nefarious plots, or at least that someone else was having more fun than him; and that plan _had_ worked for ages, you'd think they'd have figured it out sooner than they did, and finally **c)** that clever adaptation of pint glasses into Foe Glasses, which had given them just enough notice to manage a scrambling apparition to one of Pomona's garden sheds. It wasn't really a spade handle digging into her back, as they'd huddled, desperately muffling bursts of tipsy laughter between whispered expressions of devout thanks that the anti-apparition wards still weren't in fully-working condition. He did take full authorship for **d)** a quick side-along back to her quarters, which was, on all counts, a better plan than the shed (and never-mind how he knew the precise position of her chaise longue; it was Research for Something) and **e)** holding his own well enough to elicit a few more devout expressions, and the fateful words, "We should do this again, sometime."

 _Sometime_ turned into Quite a Lot of the Time, and then into All the Time and when he finally realised that the waters had grown deep and serious, he'd also gotten to know her well enough to calculate very accurate odds as to the likelihood of his survival if he backed out. It hadn't stopped him trying, two or three or fifteen times, but it had to be said that he hadn't put a great deal of effort into the show, because underneath it all, he was a firm believer in Bayesian statistics.

And then, well, sex was nice. Very nice. Nicer than he'd ever expected, and Hermione was so thoroughly the antithesis of her predecessor in his affections that he didn't feel the slightest bit awkward about any of it. Those few times he'd tried to kiss Lily he'd been worried that his dinner might still be on his breath, or he'd get the angle wrong (and with a nose like a battle-axe, well, fretting was warranted), or most prosaically, that he'd just be utter shite at it – and of course, anxiety probably guaranteed that outcome. Trying to kiss Lily was like approaching a statuesque goddess – or a statue, full stop. Her pert cupid's bow was unyielding when he had pressed a chaste caress onto it, and the creamy perfection of her porcelain cheek had never pinked when he'd ghosted his lips across her flesh. Oh, she had smiled and kissed him back, but it had been a charitable benediction, utterly unlike the wild whoops of laughter and panting giggles Hermione emitted as she squirmed across his body and laved his cock and sucked his nipples and snarled profane commands in his ear with her legs locked tight around his waist.

Hermione wasn't perfect. Not by a long shot. She drank and she swore, she could argue her point with footnotes and bibliographic references, she habitually reeked of her experiments, she gave only perfunctory attention to her appearance, she ate toast in bed, she left her socks and knickers wherever they fell (which locations were often rather inventive), she snored, she [carefully] read at the table, she nagged him constantly to eat better and to sleep regular hours, she routinely pilfered his library, she was Right to the point he'd mostly given up trying to have an opinion purely in self-defence, and she connived, schemed, and held grudges so well that if anyone had told him the Hat had wanted to put her in Slytherin, he wouldn't have even blinked.

In fact, she was so completely and profoundly imperfect that he didn't have the slightest trouble believing her, when she gripped his chin in her fingers, stared him straight in the eye, and said, "Severus, I love you more than anything. More than books, even."

He'd scoffed at her assertion, naturally, but that was just for form. That a display of disbelief elicited a mind-blowing shag, complete with expert application of some rather advanced techniques from a book (of course she had a book - several, even) she'd made a study of… well, that was a side benefit. And that said application had rendered him soppy and romantic and wont to cuddle in tight against her - sweat, drying semen, and unshaved legs notwithstanding… well, post-coital haze probably made _her_ believe _him_ , when he murmured the words _I love you too, beyond all reason_ into her rats'-nest hair.

He'd been just closing his eyes when she'd sprung the trap: "Good. I'm glad we've got that sorted. How do you feel about a civil ceremony, mid-August, say?"

Well, it didn't conflict with classes, and they'd surely have their lessons prepped by then. It was a measure of how thoroughly under her power he was, that his first inclination was to consider scheduling. Later, he'd considered that it wasn't quite ethical of her to have held him to verbal contracts made in post-ejaculatory lassitude, but she'd given him a steady gaze across the rim of her teacup and inquired as to whether he saw any absurdity in the Head of Slytherin trying to invoke an argument rooted in questions of ethics.

She had a point. He desisted.

"It's 'camouflage'."

"What is?"

"My passward."

"But that doesn't rhyme with… with anything!"

"It rhymes with 'massage', and your mind is clearly in the gutter this evening." She leaned over his shoulder to peruse the list. "Not that I consider that a bad thing. Hmm. We could do number three and number twelve at the same time, you know. Maybe progress into number seven. Er, about number twenty-nine, though, did you put that on for the sake of thoroughness?"

"Er, yes?" He'd read some of her books, too.

"I'm only wondering. Because I didn't think… well, that you would really like that. Though I'd be game to try it. If you wanted. Because I'm all for experimenting. Try anything once, right? Or thrice, because you need at least three replicates for statistics." She smiled brightly at him.

He sneezed.

Shite.

A second sneeze dashed any remaining vestige of his hopes and dreams, and he saw Number 29 recede into the horizon of No, followed by Numbers 12, 3, and 7, as Hermione's brows knit into a concerned grimace of terror, and she uttered a phrase dire enough to freeze any man's gonads, "You're coming down with something, aren't you."

Perhaps you had to know her, to get the full effect.


	2. Chapter 2

"Touch of a cold, I think. Just a tinge." He took a stab at salvaging the situation, and at least Number 7, but Hermione had a stethoscope of her own, and wasn't afraid to use it.

"You sound chesty. Breathe again."

He complied, in full awareness that resistance was futile.

"Uhuh. You've definitely got some bronchial involvement," and, severely, "Have you been to see Poppy yet?"

"Of course. Straight off, and she said it was nothing to worry over, didn't even warrant Pepper-Up." So there. And can we get back to this list, maybe?

"Hmph. We'll just see about that." She chivvied him into the bedroom, and set about stripping him of his robes and unbuttoning his customary teaching armor. While normally this would have been good progress towards a highly enjoyable evening, she was set upon performing this task efficiently, which meant without using her teeth to undo any of the buttons. In short order he found himself nude, and then unceremoniously hustled into his nightshirt and tucked beneath the duvet. She leaned over his supine body, gently lifted his hair back from his face, and pressed a soft kiss onto his brow. "I'll be back in no time at all."

And so she was, laden with, yes, Pepper-Up, but also a choice selection of sedatives (which defeated the purpose of Pepper-Up, really. Or its up-side, anyway, but from his perspective it was all the same thing.), expectorants, decongestants, antinauseants, an anti-emetic – wait, what?, a diuretic – oh dear. He stopped trying to read the labels. It was better not to think on it.

'Hermione' was an obscure synonym of 'overkill'.

He hadn't thought anything of it, in the beginning. Herbal teas, for instance, were part of healthful living, and if she went a bit overboard on their preparation, or the sheer diversity of ills she hoped to ward off through targeted consumption of various micronutrients and minerals, well, she also brushed and flossed after every meal. As her traits went, preventive hypochondria fell into the category of A Bit Odd, as opposed to Strange But Endearing, but was ultimately something that required no comment from his quarter. Well, he had chided her on occasion, such as when he'd caught her checking her temperature two or three times an hour during The Great Christmas Snot Fest.

He'd gifted her a copy of _1,001 Magical Maladies_ that year. (And an expensive necklace; he wasn't a complete cad. Though it turned out she liked the book more, which you could've seen coming.) He could have been forgiven this error, perhaps. It was still early in their relationship. Cohabiting was new: he'd learned that she arranged her teas alphabetically by chief constituent ingredient, she'd learned that he'd rather tidy up her randomly discarded knickers than mark essays, and they'd both learned that a catalogue with more than 100 varieties of cock rings offered discrete brown-paper wrapping on owl deliveries. (Minerva had learned this too, because he'd not been quite awake yet when he began to open the post at the High Table.) He had not, however, learned quite how serious Hermione Granger was about germs and the medical miseries they wrought.

He'd meant it as a joke, but she liked it, so what was he going to say? She'd thanked him warmly – and no, tongues in the Staff Room wasn't an everyday occurrence, despite the comments Some People gave them - for the book, and it had duly disappeared into her library.

Of course, it did emerge later.

Obliquely. Ominously.

Lying down had made him aware of the fact that his chest did feel somewhat heavy, and, he admitted (with a bit of sheepish reluctance), that yes, he'd been coughing a little. Just a bit. And maybe the start of a sinus headache, although that could just be the Second-Year essays. It was hard to tell.

She tutted, and laid a cool hand across his brow, and dosed him up with a tablespoon of this and a draught of that, and straightened his sheets, and bustled off to make him a cup of ginger and lemon tea with honey. He relaxed back into his pillow, and philosophically decided he could be content: it wasn't Number 29, but it _was_ awfully pleasant to feel as though someone really cherished you. And who knew, perhaps that massage was still on offer. His joints felt a little ache-y, after all.

It was. Her deft hands pushed his muscles about in gentle, rocking waves, and glided up and down his spine in slow, firm caresses. He could feel every bit of tension melting out of his body, or maybe that was a sedative kicking in, but no matter, this was absolutely lovely. He didn't even mind the menthol rub. What he could smell of it put him in mind of those winters so long ago when he could barely catch his breath in the cold from coughing, and Mam would rub his chest, and make sure his quilts were tucked in tight, and really, that was a rather nice thing to think on as he drifted off to dreamland.

Morning arrived with thermometers. "I'm sure I'm just fine," he croaked from around the glass stem.

"Hush, darling. Talking will only throw the reading off." She laid a gentle, inexorable hand upon his chest, and pressed him back down into the bedclothes. The slight tremble of her lip only enhanced the serene gaze of love that she favoured him with, as she passed a damp cloth across his brow.

That was the trouble in a nutshell. If she'd been authoritarian, or even strict, if her voice had been strident and bossy as usual, he could have held his own. But against this quiet kindness, these compassionate attentions, he was a goner. It would be like, well, like kicking a puppy. He just couldn't bring himself to be properly obstreperous in the face of her tender concern, even when her brow furrowed and she softly murmured, "Severus, sweetheart, you're running a temperature."

Any time Hermione descended to endearments (and she'd just now dropped two of them in the space of five minutes), he knew he ought to be on guard. It always culminated in horrors like being forced to attend Potter's birthday, or to have Christmas dinner with her parents, or to finish his marking in a timely fashion. But – his virus-addled brain contended – surely there was a difference between 'sweethearts' uttered with aspersion and those emitted in such a soothing tone.

He acquiesced to being propped up in bed in order to safely down another round of potions, but the change in position set off his cough. It _had_ gotten worse. He could feel phlegm rattling about in his sternum, and it sort of hurt to take anything more than a shallow breath. She braced his shoulders and traced comforting patterns at the small of his back while he inefficiently hacked up gobbets of sputum. He could feel where his ribs where going to be in agony if this kept up.

"That sounds just awful," she opined as he struggled to catch up on his oxygen acquisition. "Did you want a little percussion, get some of that moving? There's time before class."

Chest and back percussion meant more coughing, but better out than in, he supposed, although her reminder of classes nearly made him reconsider. The brush of her silken pajamas, as she straddled his waist, interrupted his deliberations on the matter.

But she was all business. He winced as her cupped palms fell upon his chest in precise, hard patterns. She was going to leave bruises at this rate, and while he didn't mind sporting a love-bite or two, he was very certain this wasn't foreplay.

"I'm sorry, love, I know it's not very comfortable, but it's good to get ahead of bronchitis." She paused in her assault to stroke his pectoral muscles. He sighed. She took it as permission to resume. "I'll give you a proper rub-down once I've finished." Being a pessimist, he didn't think she meant that kind, and he was right.

The only silver lining - if you could call it that - to the entire ordeal was that it did precipitate a vigorous round of coughing, in which he managed to expel two different colours of phlegm. Having achieved this victory over his respiratory system, he swung his legs out of bed and firmly resolved that he would accomplish his classes without murdering a single one of the little bastards, no matter how much they deserved it.

This resolution proved unnecessary, which was a total waste of a twinge of morality. "You're staying right here in bed today, mister." It was an edict delivered with most of her usual authority, but he was happy enough to comply, even though it wasn't the ideal circumstances under which he would have liked to hear that phrase. Ah well. She pressed a mug of tea into his hands and assured him she'd square it all with Minerva, even if it meant covering his classes herself, because "I do know how much you hate to get off-schedule with the lessons." He did at that. It was nice to be understood.

She plumped his pillows, and then scurried off to dress. It was sort of funny, he mused, as he sipped his tea, how she knew exactly where to find the clean knickers. It wasn't something he'd have expected, from observation of her inability to put the gently-used ones in a laundry hamper. Girls were Odd. Or Hermione was, anyway. A sample size _n_ =1 was hardly large enough to draw meaningful conclusions from, he supposed.

The tea, he noted with detachment as his eyes drifted shut, had evidently been medicated. It was terribly inconvenient that most of your sense of taste was actually down to chemoreceptors in your nose.

Dinner brought chicken soup and regret. He'd woken when Hermione had returned, despite the careful way she tiptoed about in the other room. He briefly debated pretending to still be asleep, because he did sort of feel that he might have an obligation to ask how the Fifth-Years had got on with their lesson today. His internal argument was settled by what felt like a veritable cascade of snot, but was probably actually just a slow leak. Naturally, she overheard him blowing his nose – it simply wasn't a procedure that could be done delicately. That she didn't balk at his tissues, as she helped him settle up in bed with the dinner tray across his lap, only made him more her devoted slave. You really had to love someone, to put up with their mucus.

The chicken soup was salty. He was delighted that he could still taste salt. It was his favourite flavour. You'd think that would be 'bitter', but you'd be mistaken.

It was as he was ripping the last half of his roll into pieces and poking them into the broth that the gastrointestinal troubles began.

It was unpleasant.

It lasted the better part of the night.

By morning, he knew, beyond shadow of a doubt, that he and Hermione really were Forever. She pressed a cold cloth over his burning eyes, sweetly admonished him to stay hydrated as best he could, left a tall glass of apple juice at the bedside table, and went off to teach his Second Year Slytherin-Gryffindor class. Given the intensity of the look of Grave Concern with which she had favoured him, there was even an outside possibility that she would mark those essays.

If it weren't so wholly awful, being sick might've been a good strategy to cultivate.

Things were all out of kilter when he woke again, and what on Earth would inspire Hermione to poke and prod him with such vigour – oh, it was that evil harpy, Pomfrey. She looked strangely out of focus, there were two of her which, surely, he'd never done anything bad enough to warrant that particular hell – no, _that_ was Hermione, hovering off to the side and looking wide-eyed and worried. She was biting her lip, and he wanted to tell her, don't do that, it's my job, but another spasm of coughing overtook him, and the world sort of went dark, and then it came back but the kaleidoscope of twirling colours was too much for his poor tortured stomach and –

He didn't know how much time had passed. It was late, certainly. He could tell by the bags under Hermione's eyes, and the strain around her mouth, as she jotted away in her journal. She'd dragged the chair up to his bedside. (Not his chair, but rather hers, which had a tasteful pattern and was free of any suspicious stains.) She had a book propped open on the edge of the bed, and she leaned over, occasionally, to consult its pages. He admired her cleavage from beneath slitted eyes, and wondered if he ought not to urge her to get some sleep before she wound up contracting this hellish bug, too.

And then the full horror of the situation hit him. That book was _1,001 Magical Maladies_ , wasn't it?

He groaned, and spasmed, and it fell off the bed, and although Hermione was distracted by holding him and massaging his back and checking his temperature and trying to coax him to drink something, he knew it was no good. She'd remember the book sooner or later. It was one of those things, like a mathematical proof, that you could absolutely trust in. And really, the best – the only – thing you could do was try to get some rest and hope that it went away. This was an arcane magic called 'denialism', and he was a skilled practitioner.

"Your skin is peeling, did you realise?" She had ceased tracing little circles on the back of his hand, and was instead peering intently at his palm.

He scrubbed the crusts from his eyes. It was morning, again, maybe. He squinted to see what she was on about. "Oh. Yes, that happens. Must've got something on them, in the lab the other day."

"Severus. It's been three solid days since you've been in your lab, and your hands are peeling _now_. It's clearly a symptom."

Of what, he carefully didn't ask, but she told him anyway. "There are half a dozen different disease processes that can cause this, and the key is to determine whether it's proximal or secondary. Or it might be wholly idiopathic, in which case it doesn't help at all in narrowing down what's wrong with you." She looked briefly put out. Very briefly. "The first thing, the easiest thing, to check is whether it's due to calcium-phosphate regulatory imbalance – if your phosphates are too high, your calcium will be up-regulated, it's under homeostatic control through hormones produced in the parathyroid gland – "

"Does this mean you're going to jab me with a needle," he interrupted, coughing.

It did.

That he didn't put up more than a token argument was probably another symptom of something. Declining cognitive function, maybe.

And then she had to consult with Pomfrey over whether or not his liver might be enlarged, and of course he got prodded some more. After that, it was a cotton swab jammed halfway down his larynx until he was gagging on it, which wasn't bloody fair because he'd always been very careful to make sure _she_ never gagged on anything, but did fair matter anymore? Of course not. (People mistakenly thought that Slytherins didn't understand abstract concepts like fairness. This was inaccurate. They just preferred that things be fair to their considerable advantage.)

The swab, naturally, resulted in an agar plate, which of course she took off to Pomfrey, despite his expressed opinion of "No, I don't think that looks like _Pneumococcus._ It's probably a contaminant." She didn't want his opinion anymore, it seemed.

"Cough." She was holding a tissue in front of his face. "Spit." He complied, because it was easier than arguing, and rolling his eyes still made the room do funny things on occasion. "Does this look more olive, or taupe?" He closed his eyes, and tried to get back to sleep. She'd check against a colour chart anyways, so why bother?

By the seventh or eighth day (he suspected he was beginning to lose track), he'd gotten rather good at malingering. But Hermione's eyes were getting wider, and her lips were pressed so tight they were apt to disappear entirely, and she'd mostly gotten very, very quiet. So it was almost startling when her voice broke into his thoughts: "We ought to be checking your fluid outputs. Your kidneys could be failing, and we wouldn't know until your urea went sky-high."

It was evidently past time to put a stop to this. "I'm actually starting to feel much better," he asserted, desperately. He even got all the words out without coughing, but it was clear she didn't believe him. No one ever believed him when he told the plain, unvarnished truth, which probably said something about life choices he'd made. And so heroic measures were called for. He staggered up out of the bedclothes and tottered off to the shower.

He had settled onto the floor of the tub, and was enjoying the hot rush of water over his shoulders, when he heard her open the bathroom door. The steam in here was doing a treat for his sinuses; he hoped she only needed to wee.

"Over twenty-eight hundred people died during the summer plagues of 1186. And another three thousand in '89. All told, the mortality rate was nearly one in five."

He couldn't remember what she thought he was afflicted with, but statistics like that certainly _sounded_ alarming. He had, however, long harboured a faint, niggling suspicion that his dearest Hermione was a secret frequentist, or at least chose her priors indiscriminately when applying abstract generalities about a population to specific cases that included but were not limited to her ailing husband. He was trying to think of a non-judgemental way of telling her that she was probably overreacting, when she poked her head around the shower curtain.

"Oh, Severus," she breathed.

Was that an inauspicious 'Oh Severus', or… no, it was definitely a harbinger of good things. A flick of her wand and she was standing before him in naked glory. Wreaths of steam curled around the mad halo of her hair as the spray from the shower melted strands of it across her breasts, and little beads of water coalesced upon the crinkled hairs at the apex of her thighs. Right at eye level, and by god, it was a picture to behold. He reached up to caress her arse, but clearly she had other plans. A slight reshuffling of their bodies, and she was kneeling behind him, and lord, but her fingers felt good on his scalp as she washed the last of the soap out of his hair. He leaned back into the divine embrace of her bosom, let his eyes drift shut, and just _inhaled_ , which was heaven in and of itself, even without the lingering perfume of her shampoo and the brisk notes from the soap and that delicious mustiness that was so quintessentially _Hermione_.

By his [ever-so-slightly prejudiced] estimation, his todger broke records with how quickly it came to attention.

After they'd, ahem, dried off, he tried to interest her in Round Two, back in bed, but it seemed she was unwilling to take chances with his recovery. Tomorrow, he'd work some more at reassuring her, mayhap by taking a stab at those essays. Maybe a literal stab. Or at least bloody 'em up with a little red-ink savagery, just to get back into form.

"Just rest, now, my darling love." She stroked his hair, and looked down upon him with those great liquid eyes, and it was the easiest thing in the world to smile, softly, and tell her that he loved her, as sleep claimed him once more.

That she was still using endearments should have been a clue. The subtle kind, with flashing neon lights.

He'd slept through the alarm, or she'd silenced it before he woke. In either event, he found upon crawling out of bed that he had their rooms to himself. Clearly, he was not expected to teach today, despite miraculously rallying from the brink of death. Who was he to look a gift horse in the mouth? He fixed a bracing mug of tea and a slice of dry toast, and took up arms – er, a quill and ink – before heading off to his chair to finally do battle with that stack of essays.

He was just tallying up scores when Hermione returned. While he did have it on good authority (i.e., his own) that you could fake startlement, Hermione wasn't that good of an actress. She seemed genuinely nonplussed at the sight of him up out of bed and productive.

"You really _must_ be feeling better!"

"Oh, I could still stand a bit of tender, loving care, if you take my meaning." He raised a brow suggestively.

She was having none of it, apparently. She sat herself down, woodenly, and stared at someplace beyond his head. "I really thought… Severus… I…"

After a moment, she tried again, and this time there was a note of panic in her voice. "Severus, there's a couple things I have to tell you."

She looked like a rabbit caught in headlights, and he told her so, and to get on with it before he expired of old age.

It was telling how dire things were that she didn't even take the opportunity to remind him that her teeth were perfectly average and not a bit like a rabbit, thank you very much. Instead, she took a deep breath, and he braced himself for the worst. "Alright, well it's three things, really. First, I'm at the peak of my fertility just now. And second, I'd stopped taking my contraceptive potion. Because—"

"You what?" He wasn't on the mend at all. He was hallucinating.

"I'm about 90% confident I'm pregnant, is what. And don't ask how, you were there."

Faintly, "Can I ask 'why'?"

"You just did, so yes, obviously you are entirely capable of forming that word. Severus, I thought – I thought—" Her eyes welled up and her voice trembled and she was sublimely beautiful in her moment of vulnerability but it was a dastardly, cunning lie. "I thought you were dying. I thought it might be our last chance! The only way I could keep some part of you!"

…It was trite and sentimental and soppy, and the trouble was, it was also pretty well in-keeping with both the best and worst parts of her character. He sighed, and wondered if Minerva would be amenable to his taking a year's worth of night patrols, starting, oh, [he counted] mid-August. "And what's the third thing?" Best get it all out in the open. He counted again, trying to remember what day it might be. "Did yesterday's Sixth Year Hufflepuffs blow up the dungeons?"

"N-n-o—ooo."

"Come on, out with it already."

"No, actually, brewing's gone very well, the entire time. It's just, well…"

He glared at her. And it was a damn shame that it didn't have the same effect it used to.

"I—I've been assigning them essays."

* * *

 _ **Author's Note:** And that's that. At this juncture, I would normally debase myself, grovelling and begging for comments, but as I have largely come to terms with the fact that I am not a popular author, I shall spare you that._

 _(Did you see what I did there? ALL THE SLYTHERIN POINTS TO MEEEEEEE…. Wait, I just lost them, didn't I? Aww. *is sad*)_


End file.
